Probably. This was how Vice President Dick Cheney responded when asked by The New York Times if he had information that the Sept. 11 commission did not have regarding links between Iraq and al-Qaida.

Last week, the Sept. 11 commission released a report that implied a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein’s regime to be unlikely. Among its reasons were the secular nature of Hussein’s regime and Iraq not responding to requests to establish training camps within its borders. In a perceived ambush of the commission’s conclusions, information was provided to the commission this weekend that an officer in Hussein’s Fedayeen was a prominent member of al-Qaida.

Either the commission is incompetent and should be discredited for missing this information, or the administration wants it to appear that way by releasing this fact. Although there is nothing within the discovery to establish a legitimate tie between the terrorist network and Iraq — the purported al-Qaida member was only a lieutenant colonel in the irregular military group — this snippet of intelligence leads to questions of what else the commission has not been privy to.

In other words, what is being withheld from the commission may be more telling than the information the commission is providing to the public. If the commission is to come to the most accurate conclusion, it needs all the evidence. The vice president said he “probably” has more information than the commission knows. The mere suggestion that he knows more makes it evident that the administration has not been forthcoming.

Cheney and President Bush have adamantly contended relationships between al-Qaida and Iraq exist, particularly in the wake of the commission’s findings of no “collaborative relationship” between the two. Cheney told the Times that “the evidence is overwhelming.”

Thus far, no information has been provided to the commission to prove this undeniable link. Whereas last week it appeared the left hand of the government did not know what the right hand was doing, it now seems the left hand is unfairly withholding information from the right hand.

Keeping information secret in the interest of national security is not a plausible excuse for the administration not sharing. The Sept. 11 commission was designed not only to bring closure to the victims’ families, but also to weed out national security holes.

If there is a link between Hussein and al-Qaida operatives, the Bush administration needs to show its rhetoric is more than unsubstantiated propaganda and provide its intelligence to the commission. As Thomas Kean, chairman of the commission said, “If there is any information [that] has to do with the subject of the report, we need it, and we need it pretty fast.”